


A different future

by InkyJustine



Category: Uncharted (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Moving In Together, Open AU, Regrets, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-24
Updated: 2017-01-24
Packaged: 2018-09-19 15:42:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9448181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InkyJustine/pseuds/InkyJustine
Summary: The maid, a middle-aged pleasant woman came to a stop beside Evelyn and respectfully informed her of what she already knew. Cassandra Morgan and her boys were waiting for her in her living room.What if Cassandra had done things differently, setting her sons on a changed path?





	

**Author's Note:**

> My thanks to my friends who looked this over for me and gave their input, you know who you are. :)

Evelyn was reading one of her old journals when she heard the doorbell ring. She knew who it was just as she knew that a maid was going to open it, while she hefted her slowly failing body to her feet. In the past that would have been no problem at all. Ten years ago she would have been quicker on her feet. Now her joints creaked and ached, along with her back. The things she used to do were starting to pile up. 

The maid, a pleasant, middle-aged woman came to a stop beside her and respectfully informed her of what she already knew. Cassandra Morgan and her boys were waiting for her in her living room.

Evelyn thanked her and sent her away to make them comfortable. With one hand she absentmindedly held her back, with the other she took a cigarette from its case. Her health was failing her. Old age and too much smoking, but she had had a good life, all things considered. Here and there with its bumps in the road. She missed going on her old adventures. She missed going on new adventures. There was so much still to see. So much she had had to let go now.

Cassandra, when Evelyn finally laid eyes on her, looked like more of a shadow of her old self as well. Darker circles were underneath her eyes and her cheeks were gaunter than Evelyn knew them to be in the past. She looked like a ghost in the making, or as if she hadn't slept for weeks. Maybe she was trying to hold onto her failing mind with every ounce of herself.

Evelyn didn't blame her. There was luggage surrounding them. It was not as much as Evelyn would have thought, considering the trinkets she knew Cassandra to have, but maybe they weren't as important to take with her anymore.

Then Evelyn laid her eyes on the two boys with her. The older one looked at her a little surly, but with a quick mind undoubtedly looking back at her from behind green-brown eyes. He looked to be about twelve maybe, if she was remembering right from her own son. He looked like a troublemaker in spe, too. Her ex-husband would have commented on the mischief lurking in his frame, maybe. But, she remembered sadly, her son wasn't talking to her anymore. She shook the memories away to look at Cassandra's other boy. Nathan, she remembered, was maybe six? Five? And staring around in wide-eyed wonder at the many artifacts Evelyn had put on display. She had never been very good at guessing the ages of children. Her own son's age she only knew because she had given birth to him.

"Cassandra, it's good to see you," Evelyn said. For the first time since Cassandra had stepped foot into her house, Evelyn saw her smile.

She felt a little thinner, too, than Evelyn remembered her, but maybe it was only the worry warping her perception and letting her see things in a different way.

"It's good to see you as well," Cassandra replied. She introduced her sons, who she had only mentioned in her letters. The taller one as Samuel, the younger as Nathan, making a bit of worry ease in Evelyn's chest that her own mind was still working as it should. Then she sent them to look at all the things there were to see in her house to talk with Evelyn alone.

An uneasy feeling crystallized in Evelyn's belly. It had been there since she had heard Cassandra arrive, ever since the late-night phone calls with the other woman. They had had their casual friendship and meetings throughout the years, between trips and adventures but those had come few and far between ever since Cassandra had gotten her diagnosis. And then Cassandra had written her with a proposal. A plea that Evelyn had had no heart to deny. After that had come the phone calls, the planning, like and unlike the ones they had done for their shared trips out into the wild to hunt for treasures.

Now it meant something that she was here, and with her boys no less, and without her husband. Although Evelyn had never been too fond of him. Unlike her own late ex-husband, Cassandra's had never been quite as proud of his wife's achievements. It had taken her from him too often. Evelyn could relate. She had grown estranged from her own marriage after all. The adventures had been too much joy to give up and he had never seemed to mind... she chased the thought away and took her tea with Cassandra in the lounge. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the boys gaping at the things she and sometimes both she and Cassandra had brought with them from places far away. It caught her by surprise to hear them recognize some of the things and where they had come from.

The older boy, Samuel, caught her staring and with a sudden scowl took his little brother by the hand and pulled him away to look at something else, leaving the women to their conversation.

It took a while of talking pleasantries for Cassandra to get to the point. Evelyn had no doubt that they much enjoyed each other's company, but this was something of a mixture of business deal and friendly favour. Cassandra had a brilliant mind. The theories they had come up with. Evelyn missed those times. It had made her feel younger than her years.

She thought of the painkillers that were starting to amass beside her bed.

"I left him," Cassandra finally said. A knowledge Evelyn already knew and did not comment on. At Evelyn's silence she continued, "I don't want him to see me fade away and the boys..." at that she glanced at them. They had taken a few helmets from their stands, which inexplicably warmed Evelyn's heart where with others it would have made her annoyed. The metal was slipping over Nathan's eyes, much too big for the little boy's head.

"And you didn't want them to be with their father?"

They had said everything in their letters and the late-night phone calls, but Evelyn couldn't blame Cassandra for making sure like this, to assure herself of Evelyn's continued support, instead of simply unpacking her bags and those of her sons.

Cassandra's lips twisted. "I love him, but he..." she looked down at her hands. "I'm worried what he will do with them when I'm gone."

With a start Evelyn sat up straighter. "You're always welcome here." It came out sharper than Evelyn intended and she softened her voice, when she spoke again, "Will your husband try to get you back? Them?" Evelyn tilted her head into the direction of Nathan and Samuel, blissfully ignorant of what they were discussing. Did they know already? Samuel does, Evelyn thought.

Cassandra made to shake her head and then shrugged. Her shoulders slumped. "I don't know. I want to give my sons a future. They pick up everything so fast." There was a happy smile on her face when she gazed over to them. Samuel glanced back at them and then took Nathan to the second floor along with their backpacks at his mother's nod.

"You're always welcome here. You and your boys." The porcelain made a soft noise when Cassandra set her cup down.

"Thank you Evelyn," Cassandra said. The relief was almost palpable, as if she hadn't quite been sure of it until now.

Then she got to her feet. Her smile faded a little when she looked at her luggage. Along with the maids she took them up to the rooms Evelyn had cleared for them.

Evelyn remained seated, rubbing her aching chest and took the medicine the maid wordlessly handed her.

**Author's Note:**

> While playing UC4 I thought that it would have been nice if Evelyn could have adopted the brothers. Maybe they could have more immediately set into their mother's footsteps and become famous historians.
> 
> This fic pretty short, I know. ;A; It's part of an Open AU though in which everyone can participate, so expect more. For more details check out the collection this fic was posted in. :)


End file.
